Farcaster is enabling new behaviors (Frames, Channels) and this tends to be self reinforcing. I’ve seen Frames used in the classic speculation and casino-like behavior but also some really cool new ones (like Paragraph’s ability to post longform, polls, “stories” etc.)

The creative energy and excitement are palpable and that tends to be self reinforcing. I’ve seen a lot of quality engagement in my posts, and the dynamics in Channels is really unique.

I’m more excited to open the Warpcast app than Twitter and this is a great leading indicator.

New Frontier

Some users are creating a new audience, bigger and more engaged than Twitter. Still feels possible to become “big” here and that attracts good content and people trying to make it.

It’s like the Americas vs. Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, or the West vs the East in the US. A new frontier attracts misfits and ambitious people.

TikTok had the same dynamics v. Instagram, where influencers who were not that big on Instagram were able to go to TikTok and became huge.

Stewardship

Overall I’m very impressed by the stewardship of Dan and Varun. They’ve been level-headed in most interactions I’ve seen.

There will be bigger challenges now if this keeps growing, because there will be tough decisions to be made while the protocol is not decentralized.

We’ve seen already one case where a decision to take a channel from a user who was squatting on it (/bankless) was met with outcry from a part of the community that felt that it was his right to buy and squat on this channel, and that Bankless should’ve bought it from him.

This was minor, but more decisions like that will need to be made and that will put additional pressure on the founders. It will be interesting to see that develop, because this is the major value prop of Farcaster: power will ultimately be ceded from the founders to the network itself, gradually.

Conclusion

This was not a typical week for me (took a few days off), so unlikely that I’ll spend that much time going forward.

That being said, I’m building a company that starts on top of a corporate network (WhatsApp) for distribution but aims to create a blockchain network that will ultimately cede power to the users themselves — not in the social media space, but in banking.

So a lot of the lessons here are relevant, from using a corporate network for distribution (Dan on Twitter, us on WhatsApp) and how to deal with progressive power handover.

Excited to see how it all develops.

Write anything - from your smallest paragraph to your grandest masterpiece - and publish it online or send it as email newsletters directly to your readers.

Your Paragraph publication is blazing-fast, SEO optimized, and combines the best parts of both web2 and web3 to help you create content and grow your community better than ever.

Getting started

What you're looking at right now is the Paragraph editor. We support markdown, callouts, code, and rich media embeds like Twitter and YouTube.

paragraph.xyz

@paragraph_xyz

On paragraph.xyz, all posts are stored on @ArweaveTeam. This means they're immutable, uncensorable, permanent, and composable

paragraph.xyz

Paragraph | all-in-one publishing & newsletter platform

Create, publish and share web3-native blogs & newsletters.

16

7:12 PM • Aug 18, 2022

When you publish a post, you'll have the option of sending it as a newsletter or storing it in the permanent & uncensorable Arweave.

Helpful links

Here's a few helpful pointers to customize your publication & get the most out of Paragraph:

• Theming & customization. Change your publication's font & colors; truly make this space your own.

• Set up a welcome email. This is the email your readers receive when they subscribe to your newsletter.

• Configure your publication's settings. Add links to your homepage, set up a custom domain, configure Google Analytics & more.

Need help or have feedback?

We've put together some documentation here, but if you still have questions you'd like answered we’d love to hear from you.

You can reach us via email at hello@paragraph.xyz or subscribe to our newsletter here. We're also pretty active on Discord.